Atlanta Archbishop Wilton D. Gregory said Jan. 3 that he announced the appointment “with great joy.”

“The Holy Father has selected a wonderful member of this zealous local presbyterate for the episcopacy and I know that he will bring all of his many gifts and talents to this new office,” he said in a statement.

The archbishop called the appointment “a generous expression of the esteem that the Holy Father has for this local Church and an obvious recognition of and an invitation for our continued growth and development as a vibrant community of Catholic Faith.”

Bishop-designate Talley will be ordained a bishop at Atlanta’s Christ the King Cathedral on April 2, the first Tuesday after Easter.

He was born in Columbus, Georgia on September 11, 1950 and raised as a Southern Baptist. At the age of 24, Bishop-designate Talley converted to Catholicism.

He studied at Meinrad Seminary and School of Theology in Indiana and was ordained a priest for the Atlanta archdiocese in 1989. He has a licentiate and doctorate in canon law from the Gregorian Pontifical University in Rome.

The bishop-designate has been pastor of St. Brigid Church in Johns Creek, Georgia since 2011. He has served as pastor or parochial vicar at four other Georgia churches. He has also been the archdiocese’s vocations director, chancellor and judicial vicar of the metropolitan tribunal.

Pope John Paul II named him a prelate of honor in 2001.

The Archdiocese of Atlanta has 857,000 Catholics out of a population of nearly seven million. It has 228 priests. Bishop Luis R. Zarama is the archdiocese’s other auxiliary bishop.

Pope Benedict also named a new Canadian bishop on Jan. 3.

Monsignor Stephen Jensen, vicar general of the Archdiocese of Vancouver, will succeed Bishop Gerald Wiesner as head of the Diocese of Prince George in British Columbia.